The first funeral Mass I attended as a Catholic was for a young woman named Laura who died after a long illness. She was a kind person but was lapsed from her Catholic faith. She didn't hate the Church; she was simply indifferent. Most of those who knew her and prayed for her were confident that had she lived a while longer she would have come back to the Church.

Laura's funeral Mass was beautiful—that is, up until the homily. It was then that things took a turn for the weird. After...